Secrets of Skating

by Oksana Baiul

Offers the Ukrainian skating star's views on beginning to skate, acquiring technique, the Olympics, professional skating, going on tour, developing routines, and the lessons to be learned from the sport

Genres: Sports, Figure Skating, Nonfiction, Biography

133 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 1997

Reviews

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oksana Baiul is the first and only skater representing Ukraine to win at the Winter Olympics. She won gold at the 1994 Winter Olympics, and had a very successful skating career. This book features some of her photographs and her personal thoughts and accounts of her skating career. I found this to be a very enjoyable read, as she was one of my favorite skaters to watch as a child.

[June · Rating 2 out of 5]

i borrowed this book from our school library a few weeks ago this month, (it piqued my interest since i’m an avid figure skating enjoyer myself) i found the cover pretty too, so it definitely attracted me.

this book is more of a coffeetable book but i still brought it home with me. i like how this book tackled everything: from figure skating’s culture (the greats and stereotypes) to its technicalities (axels, point system, etc.)

overall, i think it deserves its 2 stars.

figure skating is a beautiful sport — we all wish for the system to be better.

[Sara Goldenberg · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's an enormous, heavy, coffee-table sort of tome. I got it from the library but wasn't about to lug it home sort I just sort of glanced at it. It looked nice, though.

[Heidi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find her story fascinating. This book is mostly an autobiography but it also goes into the art of figure skating as well. She is a very complex individual and I think that makes her a really amazing artist. This book gets into her head a little. I must brag that I do have an autographed copy. Yes, that does mean I stood backstage after an ice show and waited for her to sign it. What's it to ya?

[Surreysmum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Photography by Simon Bruty. I'm afraid this is the kind of book design I loathe - pictures interrupted and interspersed with text in all sorts of fonts wandering all over them (in this case, of course, Oksana's thoughts on various subjects to do with her skating career). Though it looks back on the '94 Olympics and has a couple of earlier photos, this book largely documents one very specific moment in Baiul's ever-metamorphosing look. The last chapter is entitled "Hard Lessons".